ABSTRACT
The Commonwealth Government’s elite development policies exploded into the public arena in 1981 when the AIS was established at Bruce, a suburb of Canberra, the national capital. As indicated in Chapter 4, its primary goal was to assist elite athletes improve their international sporting performances. It began its operations with an extensive infrastructure comprising an athletic stadium, an indoor sports centre, outdoor tennis courts, a netball centre, 26 coaches and 150 athletes in eight different sports (Daly, 1991). Over the next two years a number of additional international standard facilities were established. They included a gymnastics training hall, a four-court indoor tennis centre, and an aquatic centre with both a 50 and 25-metre pool. By the beginning of 1985 indoor facilities had been constructed for weight-lifting, basketball and netball, and outdoor facilities had been constructed for soccer (Australian Sports Commission, 2003c). By any measure, the AIS was a handsomely funded sport training centre.
